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Dolores Kowalski

With 10 offspring and a farm, Dolores M. Kowalski had one job and not much spare time for anything else.

“Raising children was pretty much her hobby,” her daughter Alice Brill said.

Mrs. Kowalski, 91, died on Monday, April 2, at Cedar Grove Gardens.

She was born Nov. 8, 1926, in the Town of Belgium to Joseph and Mary Johann Ansay.

She graduated from St. Mary Parish School in 1940, then worked as a housekeeper in Milwaukee for a couple of years. She never attended high school.

On June 1, 1946, she married Henry Kowalski at St. Mary Parish in Lake Church. The couple operated Sunnylane Farm in the Town of Belgium, where they raised 10 children.

They sold the farm in 1989 and built a house on Sauk Trail Road, where they lived before moving to Cedar Grove Gardens in 2011.

Mrs. Kowalski was a quiet person but became a little more outspoken and showed her sense of humor later in life, her daughter said.

One of her greatest joys was large family gatherings. On the weekend before Father’s Day, the Ansay family would get together at a park in Port Washington, and every two years, a Kowalski would host a family reunion. Mrs. Kowalski especially enjoyed seeing everyone, some of whom had traveled great distances to come.

“All the catching up. The families all grew and it was wonderful,” her daughter said.

She is further survived by grandchildren Adam, Andrew, Heidi and Levi Brill, Alison and William Poull and Sadie and Jesse Kowalski; nine great-grandchildren; sisters Mary (Dick) Neerhof and Lettie Croatt, both of Port Washington; and Pearl (Bob) Houston of Tomahawk.

She was preceded in death by her husband Henry; son Jeffrey; brothers Harvey and Donald Ansay; sister Marcella Wittkopp; sister-in-law Joan Lempke; brothers-in-law Frank Lempke, James Croatt and John and Joe Kowalski.

A Mass of Christian burial will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, April 6, at Divine Savior Parish, Holy Cross Chapel, in Belgium. Father Dennis Van Beek will preside.

Visitation will take place at the church on Friday from 9 a.m. until the Mass.